


(War) What is it Good For

by SpinnerDolphin



Series: Angel Network [4]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universes, Castiel is so confused, Civil War in Heaven (Supernatural), Gen, M/M, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-18 11:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20638421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpinnerDolphin/pseuds/SpinnerDolphin
Summary: In the midst of the War in Heaven, Castiel is blown to another universe by a weapon specifically calibrated by Raphael.He is found by Crowley and Aziraphale. They patch him up, they feed ducks, and they take him to the Ritz. Aziraphale produces cocoa more comforting than anything Castiel has ever experienced, and here, in this strange place, even yellow-eyed demons can love. May they never see his world.A Prequel to the Angel Network series. (Yes it says #4 down there but it's technically #1)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO and WELCOME BACK TO ANGEL NETWORK, or if you're new, hiya! 
> 
> IF YOU ARE NEW, Hi! This is a prequel to a much larger series that crosses with the TV show Lucifer (but you don't have to know Lucifer to understand it). The rest of the series is actually very light on Supernatural; they communicate through letters across universes, occasionally. Since this is a prequel, you don't need to know the rest of the series to understand it at all. Mostly it's about Castiel making friends, and being bewildered about it. Even if you don't know Good Omens (I write book Good Omens with TV GO sprinkled in like spices), you'll be able to understand - you'll be right there with Castiel about this weird alternate universe :D
> 
> For those of you returning: HI YAY! This is the long-awaited Castiel Prequel, where Crowley and Aziraphale meet Cas and find out about Nightmare World. Fair warning: Lucifer has a few mentions but does not actually appear, because he is still in Hell, and Crowley still thinks he's terrifying. You should be okay if you've read the rest of Angel Network but don't know SPN; at that point you know enough of who Castiel is to get by. If you DO know SPN, you're golden. 
> 
> There is another upcoming story after this. Title is still in the works, but it's in present timeline, after Done My Sentence, and it's Aziraphale POV, a kind of wonky casefic. First draft is finished, and it's in edits, so you'll be seeing that one soon after this one, I hope!
> 
> Lastly but not leastly, many thanks to [ Sarahmonious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahmonious/pseuds/sarahmonious) for looking this over and checking up on all the SPN stuff!!!

Castiel did not expect to wake.

Raphael was clever, and his loyalists were spiteful. Though Castiel had the Weapons of Heaven, those vicious relics, Raphael had gathered the remnants of the ruins of the old Hall of Being. It had been sacked millennia ago by Belial, in the days before he Fell, before he burned to cinders and then to non-existence Below. From those ruins Raphael had forged weapons that Heaven had never seen. 

They had made the Reality Cannon especially for Castiel, his spies had whispered. Beware, beware.

He should have been more careful.

The thing had burned like fire, white light engulfing him in pain in terror. They had lost, Castiel had thought wildly, desperately. They had lost Heaven, and they had lost Earth, and Dean and Sam would perish in an unjust, unnecessary apocalypse. Crowley would find Purgatory, but it would be too late for the world and for even Hell. The wars would rage. His fault. All was lost, and he had failed, and now his brothers, his friends, his entire world would perish for it. The world faded to white, and Castiel despaired.

And then—

Then the light receded.

It hurt. It hurt a great deal, pain spiking along his limbs, and behind his eyes. There were two screaming bright points on his back, too, where his wings joined, and it was that that made him whimper and curl into the smallest shape he could and tremble on the stiff, scratchy surface. Wings were not corporeal. They should not experience pain, or at least, not pain in this fashion. It was _wrong,_ and terribly frightening that they hurt so, so sharp and _physical_. 

There was a screeching sound. Then footsteps. Pebbles pressed beneath his cheek.

“What _on Earth?_” spluttered a voice. It spoke English, an Earthly language, and it was with an accent Castiel registered, but he was in too much pain to identify it. “Angel! Aziraphale, get out here! He looks injured!”

More footsteps. “Did you _hit him_, my dear?” asked a second voice, aghast, also in English.

“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous; that would have bent the fenders. Do you recognize him?”

“No. You?”

“No.” Very gently, a hand touched Castiel’s shoulder. It was cool and soothing, and some of the pain receded, but not even close to enough. “Hey. You’re in the middle of the road.” The voice was sibilant but gentle. “Dead in the middle of London. You have to winch in your wings, or someone will notice.”

Castiel was in far too much pain to be able to reply with words. He exhaled, hard, and leaned into that cool, comforting hand. It seemed like eons since he had felt a touch so kind from anyone but Dean or Sam. Those fingers drummed gently against his shoulder, thoughtful.

“He’s an angel,” said that sibilant voice. “I can’t heal him. I can’t even see what’s wrong. Something kind of—warping. Can you see anything, Aziraphale?”

Footsteps, closer, and someone knelt next to him, ran gentle fingers through his hair. “He’s in a great deal of pain,” said the voice called Aziraphale seriously. “I think we must cancel lunch, my dear. We ought to bring him back to the bookshop. I can get a better look there. _Look_ at these wings!” He sounded upset. “Terrible state, poor thing.”

A sigh. “I was looking forward to that restaurant,” the second voice said, sulky. “It’s so booked it’s causing low-levels of irritation to waft down the street like waves. I could feel it all the way from Mayfair, and I didn’t even lift a finger. You know how tiny the portions are, angel?”

“Hush,” said Aziraphale, amused. “We can go another day. I’m going to lift you, alright?” The last was gentler, addressed to Castiel.

Castiel wanted to tell him absolutely not, please leave him to perish, but he didn’t have the breath. Pain radiated from his core like a small sun, stealing even the order of his thoughts. But then Aziraphale did something strange: Castiel heard his fingers snap, and Castiel was lifted gently from the ground, not a burning ounce of him disturbed by the movement.

“Oh, because that’s not conspicuous at all,” drawled that second voice.

“Hush,” said Aziraphale again. “Come along now. Sleep, my friend,” he added, apparently to Castiel, and the world went dark.

When he woke, he was in a bed. It was a lush sort of bed, soft and comfortable, and the room was mostly dark. He was still in pain, but far less, and he was lying on his side. He blinked down at the extremely soft sheets. He didn’t think he’d ever encountered sheets that comfortable before.

He flexed his fingers. Pain rippled up through them, and he thought, with abstract surprise, that they were corporeal. He was corporeal. He shifted his weight, and there was more of him than there should be—two heavy weights on his back. He sucked in a breath, a little panicked.

“You’re alright,” murmured a soft voice. “You’re safe here. It’s alright.”

Castiel looked up.

There was a man in a rocking chair in the far corner of the room. Well—no. There was a light around the back of his head—a halo, and it glowed. In his lap he held a book. His eyes were soft blue, his hair tousled blonde, and his smile was kind and utterly unfamiliar. Castiel flinched. He had never seen this angel before. How was he getting his halo to do that without burning up the room?

Some tiny, incredulous voice that sounded rather a lot like Dean whispered in the back of his mind—and was he using it as a damned _reading light_?

“Who—” he rasped. “Who are you?”

“I could ask you the same,” the angel replied with a genial smile. “My name is Aziraphale. I was the Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden; now I am the Principality of England, and, truth be told, the rest of Earth, too. The other Principalities tend to ask for transfers after a few years.” His smile became a little tight. “What is your name?”

Castiel had never heard of an angel Aziraphale before. It was further extremely surprising to come across an angel who did not recognize him; even more surprising to come across one who did not wish him ill. “I am Castiel,” he said, cautiously, testing. Surely he knew the name, at least. He had started a rebellion in Heaven, after all.

But apparently it was not so, for Aziraphale’s forehead wrinkled in very human confusion. “I’m afraid I don’t recognize that name,” he said.

Very strange. “I don’t—” he coughed, hard and foreign. This was not something he usually experienced on Earth. He coughed again and couldn’t catch his breath. It was a strange sensation. 

“Would you like some water?” He sounded concerned, the way a human was concerned. Castiel coughed and coughed and wondered how water would help. Aziraphale closed his book and got to his feet. He put the book down on his rocker and padded over on slippered feet to scoop up a cup of water, which he brought to Castiel. “Sip it slowly, now.”

Slowly, laboriously, Castiel pulled himself upright, coughing and coughing. He hurt all over, and he gasped at those strange weights on his back, but he pushed the panic to one side enough to sip the water. It did help. He sipped and sipped and the coughing calmed, and it was lovely and cool and very clearly not cursed, so he drank deeply. He gasped when he was done, and said at last, “I don’t recognize yours either.”

“Very strange indeed,” Aziraphale murmured. “Of course, there are a great many angels, but my name is rather—well.” He grimaced. “I suppose that memo went around.” The last was a little bitter.

“Memo?” asked Castiel.

“Mm.” Aziraphale bustled back to the rocking chair, leaving the empty glass with Castiel. “Tell me, Castiel,” he said, sitting. “What injured you?”

Humans, when injured, tended to forget the trauma. Angels did not; it was part of the design. Castiel was absolutely certain that Lucifer remembered every moment of his Fall. “Raphael’s Reality Cannon,” he said darkly. He turned the empty water glass slowly in his hands.

“W-what?” gasped Aziraphale, oddly expressive for an angel.

Castiel looked back at him. “You have not heard of this either.”

“No!” Aziraphale breathed. He looked flabbergasted, horrified. “Why in Heaven would Raphael have something called a Reality Cannon?”

A strange question, too. “The war.”

“The war has been over for _centuries!_” cried Aziraphale. “Unless you mean—the end. The apocalypse. But we stopped it!” The last was an impassioned cry.

“Raphael wants to start it again. Surely you know this,” Castiel said, incredulous.

“I’m retired,” Aziraphale whispered, heartbroken. “After I stopped the first one, they stopped sending me the memos.”

Wait. Castiel blinked at him, exaggerated. “I don’t remember you at the end of the world.”

“Well of course you don’t,” Aziraphale said, impatient. “They were embarrassed. They would have wiped everyone who could be wiped.”

That still didn’t make sense. “No—_I _helped stop it,” Castiel said slowly. “I was there. At the apocalypse. Michael killed me. Our Father brought me back.”

Aziraphale stared at him[1]. Dean was right; that unblinking stare was unnerving. “Reality Cannon, you say?” he asked softly.

“Yes,” said Castiel.

“What does it do? A Reality Cannon.”

To be quite honest, Castiel hadn’t a clue. The only thing he knew was that it was large, dark, and made a very loud noise, and it hurt a great deal. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Only,” Aziraphale said, “I’m very certain there was only one apocalypse, and that you were not there.” He stood abruptly. “One moment please.” And he bustled out the door and, presumably, to the rest of the—house.

Bemused, Castiel watched him go. Everything ached too much for him to even consider getting out of bed. It was a strange sensation. His body hurt, but so did his essence. There was no moving, not really, or certainly not far. There was no fighting. He was weak as a newborn human. Whatever would happen, would happen. Castiel was powerless to stop it.

He sighed, a long, defeated sigh. He had poured—everything—into this, this war. He had tried to save Earth, wanted it with a passion that he had never encountered—or at least, never before he met Dean. He had fought so hard to save the world. It seemed that he had failed.

Listless, he leaned back against the headboard. That hurt, too.

After a long, long silence, he heard a voice from below screech, “_WHAT???_” He was fairly certain it was not Aziraphale.

He petted the soft sheets. It all hurt, and he was probably going to be murdered shortly, but it was very nice to be back on Earth, at least, even if Earth was soon to die. His poor troops, his poor lost cause, his poor Winchesters. He sighed again, deep and mournful.

Aziraphale bustled back—it sounded like he was climbing stairs. He burst into the room in a flurry, holding a very large tome. Triumphantly, he sat back in his rocker.

“He nearly went mad, you know,” Aziraphale said cheerfully. “They laughed at him. He was correct, of course. Oh, you are a lucky one, Castiel.” He nearly vibrated with excitement.

Castiel most definitely did not feel lucky. “I don’t understand,” Castiel said.

“It’s a secret!” Aziraphale said, clearly thrilled. “A good one. I wouldn’t know either, except that I hang about with someone who once worked in the Hall of Being. Crowley helped build nebulae, you know. Stars. He worked on _up _and _down._ He’s terribly clever, my Crowley.” He beamed[2].

“I still don’t understand,” Castiel said, feeling lost.

“Hugh Everett, Castiel! Do you have one of him, where you’re from?” He tapped the book.

“Please explain,” Castiel said, plaintively. He was in pain, he’d lost the war, and this angel was now speaking in utter nonsense.

“Alternate realities!” Aziraphale beamed. “A Reality Cannon, don’t you see? Two different apocalypses[3]! I think you were blown from your reality into ours.”

Castiel gaped at him. “Who is Hugh Everett?” he asked weakly.

“An American physicist,” Aziraphale said. “In the forties I was sent, on Heaven’s mandate, to, er, discourage him. Apparently a theory of alternate realities was too dangerous, though I couldn’t imagine why. I figured it was ineffable, and did my job, but _now_ I see!” He smiled at Castiel. “What would happen, I wonder, if Heaven were to find out that there are in fact multiple realities—multiple Heavens? Oh, Gabriel wouldn’t like that at all!” The last was said with relish.

Gabriel? “Gabriel is dead,” Castiel said doubtfully.

“Oh, here he is most certainly alive,” Aziraphale said.

Here. There. Reality Cannon. Alternate realities. It did make a twisted kind of sense; an alternate reality was not unheard of. It was a secret, of course, that there were alternate worlds, but it was a badly kept one. Castiel and Balthazar had found out centuries ago, by accident, when they’d found a weak point in the world. They had taken great advantage of that knowledge, over the years; most recently, they’d tucked Sam and Dean into a world without magic, decoys but presumably safe from assassins. That… had not gone as smoothly as Castiel had hoped, but his clever boys had gotten out safely, at least.

“I’ve been blown to an alternate reality,” Castiel echoed slowly, testing it. He wasn’t sure he believed it. But it certainly sounded like something Raphael would do.

“I think so.” Aziraphale nodded, enthused. “You are—I’m sorry, I don’t know how to explain this in English—_Do you have Enochian, where you are from?_”

It took Castiel a moment to understand that last part. Aziraphale spoke Enochian, certainly, but with a thick, birdlike accent, and a great deal of unnecessary articles, far more than he was used to. _“I speak Enochian,” _he replied slowly, and it came out—easier, somehow, than it usually did on Earth.

Aziraphale laughed, delighted. “Oh, that is dreadful!” he cried. Presumably Castiel also had an accent. “You’ll burst the lightbulbs, at that rate!”

“Strange,” said Castiel, a little overwhelmed. It could all be an elaborate ruse, of course. But no angel was clever enough to come up with something so human as an _accent, _let alone figure out how to apply it to Enochian. “What did you need to explain?”

_“Long ago,” _Aziraphale told him, taking care to speak slowly, _“There was the Hall of Being. My sunshinesweetlove once worked there.”_

That was an endearment, Castiel realized, and a terribly strange one. Enochian was not made for endearments, and nor were angels. Aziraphale had mashed three words together, human-style, to come up with a word that evoked a stilted sort of tenderness. It was awful. Enochian was not a language built for affection; it came out all wrong.

Alternate realities, he thought. Accents and strange angels. Maybe two apocalypses, though that could be a lie. No angel was clever enough to come up with an accent, though, that was just so—human. And how Aziraphale smiled, how his face was bright and mobile the way each Winchester’s face was bright and mobile—so expressive. No angel was that expressive. Castiel watched Aziraphale, and he listened.

_“I was a soldier. Most of us were soldiers. But this angel was not; he was clever. Too clever. The Hall of Being was made of blueprints; this you probably know—blueprints for Earth and everything around it. Trees, and stars, and harmony and gravity and love. Once, he sneaked through a door that he shouldn’t have, out of curiosity. He found blueprints for other Earths. He thought they were discarded; they weren’t.” _Aziraphale hesitated. “The rest of the story is for later, I think,” he murmured. “You need rest.”

“That’s a Falling offence,” Castiel said softly. “Or it was, in the Beginning.”

“Yes, it is,” Aziraphale said. “And it was. Among other things. But that is a tale for another day.”

“If one of the Fallen is near, then we are in grave danger,” Castiel said. A sharp spike of panic drove up into his throat. Alternate universes were all very well and good, but Lucifer’s Fallen were deadly and dangerous. Most were dead or caged, but those vanishing few that yet lived were deranged and powerful. Castiel was in no shape for a fight.

“We are quite safe,” Aziraphale said calmly. “He will not enter this room unless I permit it, and I do not permit it. He has been my personal nemesis for six thousand years, Castiel.” Aziraphale’s voice was very grave. “I assure you, I know all of his tricks[4].”

“You gave him a petname,” Castiel said, incredulous.

“Six thousand years is a very long time,” Aziraphale tittered. “Now. Would you like something to eat? Or perhaps to sleep again? I will stay with you, at any rate. You need to regain your strength; you still look dreadful.”

“I—would like to hear more of your world,” Castiel said slowly. “Tell me of your apocalypse.” Information, Castiel thought. He needed information.

“Certainly, if you will tell me of yours.” He smiled.

He was a genial fellow, Aziraphale, unlike any angel in Heaven that Castiel had ever met. Had he said six thousand years? That was indeed a long time to be someone’s enemy. How had that come about? A personal nemesis? And they hadn’t yet killed each other? _Petnames?_

He thought of the Crowley of his world, the King of Hell, also prone to petnames, and suppressed a shudder. Never, never, never. Never could he grow fond of such a creature, regardless of any deals.

Meg, though…

“Certainly,” Castiel said.

Aziraphale smiled. He pulled up his rocker, and he began a wild, incredible tale of attempting to raise a malevolent boy human, side by side with a bright-eyed demon who wanted to save the world. All that work, only to find out that the boy wasn’t the Antichrist at all. The demon had got it wrong. The familiar and strange spiral of a world at its end, utterly different from what Castiel had experienced. The right Antichrist, who stopped the end of the world. Angel and demon slipped away, quietly, under that boy’s protection. Strange, strange tale.

A whole other world, Castiel thought with wonder, finally letting himself begin to be convinced.

He took an unnecessary breath. At Aziraphale’s expectant look, he began the tale of Sam Winchester, and his brother Dean, destined to be vessels –

“Vessels?” Aziraphale interrupted, puzzled.

“For angels,” Castiel said.

“I don’t understand,” Aziraphale said.

“Do you not—” Castiel hesitated. “How are you corporeal?”

“I was given a body,” Aziraphale said. “To shape as I pleased.”

A body to shape? “In my world,” Castiel said, testing this, this theory that he was in an alternate reality, “Angels do not have bodies. In order to walk the earth, we must inhabit a vessel.”

Aziraphale blinked at him. “You must possess someone, you say.”

“Yes,” said Castiel.

“Do you timeshare?” he asked, rather innocently. “Dreadfully messy, that.”

“Timeshare?” Castiel asked.

“Well. Do you make room for the human? It’s uncomfortable, but it can be done, if you’re forced to possess. I’ve done it. You share the body.”

Something in Castiel twisted. He looked into Aziraphale’s blue eyes, and he saw silly kindness, and innocence. Somewhere, way down deep where he had hidden what was left of his compassion, something cracked. True sweetness in an angel was rare; it came from Aziraphale in waves. Castiel felt oddly… protective. “We don’t timeshare,” he said quietly.

Aziraphale’s eyes widened a little in alarm. “Where is he then? Your human. Your—vessel.” He nodded at Castiel’s body.

“Dead,” said Castiel regretfully. “His name was James Novak.”

Aziraphale stared at him, clearly horrified. “Did you _kill_ him?”

Castiel shook his head. “Lucifer did.”

Aziraphale sat back in his rocker. “He broke the law,” he breathed, as though scandalized.

That made no sense. “What law?”

“No angel, Fallen or otherwise, is permitted to kill a human,” Aziraphale told him earnestly. “…Except for me, of course. I have an exception due to my long earthly posting—but I hate to do it.”

That still made no sense. Human life was beautiful, but most angels thought it—cheap. “There is no such law,” Castiel said.

Aziraphale looked at him. Castiel looked back, and it sank in, finally. “Alternate world,” Castiel said weakly.

“Alternate world,” breathed Aziraphale. “How dreadful. Tell me the rest.”

So Castiel did. He told Aziraphale of Sam and Dean and the Yellow Eyed Demon[5] called Azazel, how Sam was primed to be Lucifer’s vessel, how Dean sacrificed himself and made a deal with a crossroads demon; how Castiel rescued him from Hell. The tale of the Michaelsword, and how Dean was destined to be Michael’s vessel. The Four Horsemen, Sam’s sacrifice. It was a long, long road to the apocalypse. Aziraphale was a good audience, all wide eyes, and he gasped at all the right moments.

Castiel’s story wound down with his own death, and then his resurrection. He told Aziraphale about the war in Heaven, how Raphael wanted to rule Heaven and start the Apocalypse again, how Castiel’s followers wanted free will. How they were losing. How he’d been struck down, and how that meant the end of the war, and the End of All Things.

He finished, exhausted.

“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale said into the silence. “Oh dear me.” He swallowed. “I’m so sorry, Castiel.” He hesitated, bit his lip, and then blurted: “You are safe here.” His eyes shone, earnest and well-meaning. “I can’t speak for your world, but here in this room, on this Earth, Heaven is not at war. We averted our Apocalypse, and we are safe. I once guarded Eden; I will guard this room while you rest. Recover. No harm will come to you here.”

Angels didn’t cry, as a general rule, but Castiel still felt his breath hitch. Aziraphale really meant that. He could see it in his soul, in the way he held himself, shoulders broadening in his chair like he wanted to display his feathers for emphasis, only without the visible wings, of course. Sincerity dripped from him. “Thank you,” Castiel said and he meant it, too. That was a great kindness. 

Aziraphale nodded. “Sleep now.”

Castiel wanted to tell him that angels didn’t sleep, but he found himself sinking down into the pillows, exhausted despite the pain he was in. His eyes slipped closed, and sleep hit him like Dean’s beloved car.

___________

[1] That made no sense. Michael, who liked to battle but had also used all his Earth Visits in a blaze of hedonistic glory, would not, could not, kill another angel. He had always been kind to Aziraphale, even when the others weren’t. He was destined to fight Lucifer to the death at the End of All Things, but that—they’d stopped that. There was no questioning the Ineffable, of course, so maybe Him Above, the Lady God did bring Castiel back. But then, there had only been one apocalypse, Aziraphale was sure of it. None of these things made sense, and only humans could be delusional. Castiel was either lying, or—oh, but what if he wasn’t? What if he was being perfectly honest? Aziraphale’s mind raced. Reality Cannon. Translated from Enochian: _Doesech ne coplaeth. _ That which (breaks/bursts through/shatters) (boundaries/that within the circle/the world/reality). Reality Cannon. Right there in the name. Surely not.

He had to speak to Crowley. _Right now_.

[2] _His_ Crowley. Ten years from the apocalypse, five years since they had settled into each other and it was still so new, so lovely. Crowley liked to sleep with his cheek on Aziraphale’s thigh, as Aziraphale read in the night. He was soft and close and filled with trust. Aziraphale was smitten, terribly unbecoming of an angel of his rank and status. He didn’t care. 

[3] Upon hearing that Castiel had worked to stop an apocalypse, Aziraphale, mostly out of sheer, blind hopefulness, had rather decided to trust him. Hiding downstairs, Crowley was raging silently at the ceiling that _what if he was a spy, angel, honestly!_

[4] Crowley’s tricks mostly consisted of Devil’s food cake, a good Cabernet, and lately snaky cuddles, but Aziraphale was hardly going to tell this poor, frightened angel that, not until they built some trust between them.

[5] Oh dear, thought Aziraphale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE WONDERFUL [ Hope4Tomorrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope4Tomorrow/pseuds/Hope4Tomorrow) HAS DONE A FRANKLY AMAZING PODFIC for this story!!! You can find it on Ao3 [ here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26325406?view_adult=true)!!


	2. Chapter 2

When he woke, the room was brighter, and he was in less pain. He turned his head, and there was Aziraphale, as promised, sipping a mug of something that smelled lovely. He blinked, feeling more relaxed in this bed than he had in eons.

“Good morning,” Aziraphale murmured. “How are you feeling?”

Castiel blinked again. “Groggy,” he said, and his voice was a little hoarse, on top of Jimmy’s usual gravel. It was a strange sensation. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Two days,” Aziraphale said with a smile. “I think you needed it.”

“Two _days?_” Castiel gasped, and then he remembered: the war was lost. He was in an alternate reality. Nothing mattered. He sank back into the pillows, and despair coiled around his shoulders like a serpent. There was no urgency; it was over.

“Well, Evil never sleeps and Good is ever vigilant,” Aziraphale said, setting his mug aside, “But a well-earned nap never hurt anyone. You, my friend, seemed to need it. Are you in pain?”

“Some,” Castiel said honestly. He curled up a little and hissed; two points on his back flared. “What—” he tried to twist to see it, but that hurt more.

“Stop,” Aziraphale said, sharp. Castiel froze. “You are likely not used to your wings being corporeal,” he said gently. “It took me some time to get used to the weight.”

_Corporeal? _“Impossible,” Castiel breathed, and he twisted despite the flaring pain and the blankets around him moved and—

He had two extra limbs.

“Impossible,” Castiel said again, weakly. He tried to shake them free of the blankets—he was lying on his side, and one was mashed nearly under his weight, but the other he could pull free. It hurt a great deal, but he was determined.

His right wing was large and—brown. His feathers were brown-on-brown, barred like a bird of prey. He flexed the pinions and watched them move with human eyes, fascinated. This was utterly impossible. Wings could not be corporeal. They—burned. It was too much power in one place. How could this be possible? He ran trembling fingers through his coverts, through his primaries. The powder-down was _physical, _corporeal, a real thing that coated his corporeal fingers and his corporeal feathers. Impossible.

His muscles hurt from the movement. It didn’t matter.

The feathers were in complete disarray, but he knew that; that came of too long fighting, too many years not trusting his brothers enough, not even really liking his brothers enough, to preen. They had itched for so long that the pain was almost a relief.

“They are in rather a state, aren’t they?” Aziraphale said softly. “I’m sure the blankets didn’t help. Do they hurt?”

“How is this possible?” breathed Castiel. “Wings cannot be corporeal.”

“Oh, they certainly can here.” Aziraphale shrugged. “They do have power, though, so you must be careful. Frightens the humans, you understand, and those particularly, er, susceptible can sometimes become—obsessed, if one isn’t careful. Humanity here has a tendency to be—overly affected by the divine. Best to keep them winched in, around the humans, unless you know the human very well. The better you know the human, the less they will be affected, you understand.”

Corporeal. Wings that would not hurt Dean. What a strange and wonderful world. He stroked through the feathers again, coating them with powder-down, marveling at the feel of it.

He’d seen them a thousand times in Heaven. He’d felt them, weightless at his back, ordinary as a leg. But he had never seen them on the mortal plane. It was like looking down and finding incredible zebra stripes on your hands.

They were beautiful, and they were his, and they were corporeal.

He looked up at Aziraphale, his hopeful eyes and his kind smile and his steaming cup of something fragrant on the table. His wings were corporeal and this angel was so kind. Strange, strange world. “I don’t know how to winch them in,” he said. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

“Don’t,” said Aziraphale. “Not yet. Heal first. Would you like some cocoa?” A second mug appeared beside the first.

Castiel sat up carefully. Everything still hurt, but it was definitely—less, than before. “Alright,” he said, doubtfully, and Aziraphale brought the mug to him.

He hadn’t had cocoa before. He knew it was chocolate in some kind of drink form, but Sam and Dean drank coffee, mostly. Castiel did eat on occasion, but it was generally with the Winchesters, at their insistence. What use had an angel for food and drink?

Aziraphale handed him a warm mug, and the brown liquid inside was sweet. It had a kind of weight to it, and Castiel sipped—for he understood, then, that the heat implied that it was to be sipped and not gulped—and it was, indeed, pleasing.

“I like this,” he said, surprised.

Aziraphale chuckled. “I do too,” he said. “I do hate to say it, because in truth the whole business was dreadful, but I did enjoy chocolate from the New World.”

The New World. “Where—are we?” Castiel asked. Aziraphale had said—he was a Principality. Principalities were territorial creatures, in Castiel’s experience. They were mid-level angels with strong ties to specific places. Aziraphale’s kindness was even more remarkable, if he was a Principality. 

“We’re in London,” Aziraphale said proudly. “A city in a country called England,” he added, likely knowing that Castiel had absolutely no context. “Which exists on small subcontinent north of Europe.”

That was somewhat helpful. Tentatively, he asked, “How far is it from South Dakota?” That was where Bobby Singer’s house was, after all. All of these places had exact coordinates in Enochian, of course, and Castiel could know precisely where they were that way, but the humans had a different way of looking at it. Aziraphale, clearly preferring the human way as he hadn’t just given coordinates, could be a wealth of knowledge.

“Oh, most of a continent and the Atlantic Ocean,” Aziraphale said, smiling. “Quite far, as humans measure things.”

Castiel liked Aziraphale, but he warmed to him further. “Thank you,” he said softly. “Most angels don’t understand the way humans measure things.”

Aziraphale’s smile widened and brightened his eyes, just like a human. Fascinating. “No,” he agreed, “They really don’t. But you’re trying, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Castiel said wistfully. It didn’t matter anymore. That world, Dean and Sam, they were gone, now. He’d lost the war. He turned the mug in his hands, melancholy.

“Those humans of yours,” Aziraphale said gently. “That’s why you’re trying. The hunters.”

“Yes,” said Castiel, now a little wary.

“Your first?” Aziraphale asked.

That threw him. “My first what?”

“Humans. The first humans you have come to care about. This Dean and his brother.”

Castiel stared at him, confused. “Yes,” he said, slower.

Aziraphale nodded. “I have been on Earth for its entire history. I have loved a great many humans. I do not know what your world might go through but—” he cleared his throat. “It’s worth it. They’re worth it. For what it’s worth.” He smiled crookedly.

Castiel exhaled, a little winded.

Aziraphale understood. Impossible. How. How could he possibly— “What do you do when they die?” It was almost a cry.

“Mourn. Take care of their children, maybe, or their city. See that?” he pointed to a shelf on the other side of the room; there was a small statue, a woman in a robe with a horn of plenty. “That was one of the Laures belonging to a woman named Cornelia. In Rome. She was a good friend of mine, and asked that I might take care of it.”

“But that’s blasphemy,” said Castiel, wondering.

“I make no sacrifices,” Aziraphale said lightly. “But I keep her with me. She reminds me of Cornelia, and I did promise.”

Maybe he could keep the Impala, Castiel thought wryly, but then he remembered that he was trapped in the wrong universe, and the Earth would soon be dust anyway. He sighed.

“If you so wish it,” Aziraphale said into the silence, “We can find a way to send you back to them, when you are well.”

“I doubt there will be a way,” Castiel said wryly. “If Raphael built a cannon especially for me, it will be final.”

“Ah,” said Aziraphale, a twinkle in his eye, “But he could not account for me on the other end, could he? And he certainly couldn’t account for Crowley.”

That was true. “Crowley is your demon,” Castiel said slowly. “Your nemesis.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale chuckled. “I was telling the truth when I said he wouldn’t come in this room. He doesn’t like new angels. If you want to meet him, you’ll have to come down to the bookshop. He’s been sleeping in my back room, these past few days[1].”

“You—have a bookshop.”

“Oh, yes! And I might have something down there that could help. What do you think? Are you up to moving?”

“I—cannot fight,” Castiel managed.

“Goodness, why are you fighting?” 

“This—demon. Is down there. One of the Fallen. They are quite dangerous, Aziraphale.” Aziraphale seemed so kind. Was this demon taking advantage?

“Oh, Crowley most assuredly does not want to fight you. The worst he’ll do is try to feed you. He’s been on Earth just as long as I have, you see. He did help me stop the apocalypse. And I must say, I will be most put out if you attempt to harm him; I am quite attached to him.” The last was a little severe.

Castiel stared at him.

He had grown attached to Meg, for a time. They had been allies. It wasn’t unheard of. And he had schemed with the Crowley of his own world, thankfully pronounced differently, that terrible plan that might buy him some extra power. But one of the Fallen? It was something of a stretch.

“I won’t harm him unless he attempts to harm me,” Castiel said slowly.

Aziraphale pursed his lips. “That’ll have to do, I suppose,” he said, “Provided that you are not the jumpy sort. Forgive me, Castiel, but I will defend him. He is very dear to me. Do you think you can stand? I can send Crowley for breakfast, and we can eat it downstairs.”

“I—do not need to eat,” Castiel said hesitantly.

“It will be a good change of scenery,” Aziraphale said. “And it will be good to get you upright, if you can. Can you?”

Castiel could. It was difficult, and he wobbled—the wings on his back were heavy, and the soles of his feet ached where they touched the ground, shivery awful bits of pain still pulsing through him like lightning. But Aziraphale was there to take his cup and steady him, and he was gentleness personified. He offered Castiel a shoulder to lean on and got him to the door with absolute patience.

Just beyond the door was the demon. Castiel felt his feathers ruffle on instinct[2].

Truth be told, he had never seen one of Lucifer’s Fallen before. The Six Hundred Sixty-Six had been banished from Heaven and into Hell, where they had slaughtered each other, or caged each other, or tortured each other into oblivion. Those vanishing few left in his world were mostly caged, like Lucifer, or mad or hiding. The orders from Heaven were _Kill on Sight_, and he could see why.

The Fallen was an angel’s shadow. Everything that made an angel an angel was removed. It felt like Lucifer felt—terrible and wrong and dangerous. The closest sensation a human might feel was crawling skin; Castiel’s very essence recoiled from this creature. A horror, Hell-touched. 

“So I ssee our guest is awake,” said the Greater Demon, strangely sibilant. It wore a man’s body, long and slender in a dark suit, dark-haired, with sunglasses. It spoke with a strange, raspy hiss. Castiel badly wanted to slay it, but there was no fight in him, and he had promised.

“Wide awake! Castiel, this is Crowley, Crowley, this is Castiel.”

“Don’t think we have an analogue,” Crowley said thoughtfully. “We have a Cassiel. Please tell me you’re not Cassiel; she did this thing to Dagon like two thousand years ago, and he will not let it go; bad enough I’ve gone rogue, but if I help any version of Cassiel they might actually dismember me for good.”

“My dear,” Aziraphale started, but he sounded amused.

“We have a Cassiel, too,” Castiel said. “I’m different.”

“Thank Manchester,” said the demon. “You up to stairs? There’s food downstairs.”

“Oh Crowley, you didn’t have to do that!”

“You’ve been holed up in that room for days, angel; Least I could do was pop over to Paris and get you something nice while he was sleeping.”

“You brought croissants!” Castiel had his arm around Aziraphale’s shoulder and was leaning on him, close enough to feel him vibrate with delight. 

“Yes, I did. And—you know, various.” He shrugged one shoulder.

Aziraphale was so clearly delighted, and not at all suspicious, that Castiel found himself frowning. “Why,” he asked the demon.

The demon didn’t play stupid. It didn’t say _why what. _“Because he is my friend,” it said, defiant. It lifted its chin, like it was expecting a blow.

Strange.

Aziraphale got him down the stairs, though it was a laborious process and it hurt a great deal. Crowley, being a demon, ran off ahead and didn’t help. He did hold the door though, much to Castiel’s surprise.

Castiel got just a glimpse of the bookshop proper, filled to bursting with haphazard books, before they hobbled to the back room. It was a small room, with a sofa and a little round table. The table only had two chairs, but Crowley waved a hand and a third appeared, without a back. Aziraphale settled Castiel into it.

Castiel was rather skeptical about the chair but nothing about it felt wrong. No curse, no hex, no holy oil or any sort of trap. It just felt like a chair, albeit a chair that could accommodate his abruptly corporeal wings. It was incredibly confusing.

Aziraphale settle down on the chair next to him on a sigh. “Oh, Crowley, this is lovely, thank you.”

Upon the table, Castiel realized, was an assortment of breads, none of which were familiar. There were glass jars which did seem to contain jam, though there was no peanut butter to be seen. He had sort of a sinking feeling that this food was entirely different from what the Winchesters usually consumed and therefore entirely foreign.

The cocoa, however, was ubiquitous; Aziraphale had conjured more from—somewhere—and poured Castiel a second cup from a large, warm ceramic pitcher. This at least was somewhat familiar. Castiel pulled the cup close when it was filled.

“Well, you’ve converted another one,” Crowley drawled.

“Do shut up, my dear,” said Aziraphale, pouring Crowley a cup too. 

“Slaaaaaaavery,” sang the demon cheerfully, apropos to nothing.

“Warmth and comfort,” Aziraphale retorted, “And we are long past the Conquistadores, Crowley! I won that round.”

“You did not, you bastard,” Crowley laughed. “Racism and oppression. I still won.”

“You’re retired, you old serpent, and you set foot in the Americas exactly three times, as I recall, and each time sent you screaming back to England.”

The demon shuddered dramatically. “They’re all mad over there,” he said. “Pass the jam, angel, I flew long and hard for this.”

Castiel watched this exchange, utterly baffled. He looked to Aziraphale when he sat down. “I do not understand,” he said.

Aziraphale pulled a long piece of bread out of its paper and broke it into three large pieces[3]. He gave one with the heel to Crowley and looked to Castiel. “Oh, we are mortal enemies!” he said cheerfully. “There’s a score, of course. Would you like the heel, or the middle?”

“He’s trying to get you to give him the middle,” Crowley drawled. “He likes the middle.”

“Crowley!”

And this was so absurd, so patently insane, that Castiel said, “You can have the middle. I don’t eat, much.”

“Oh, you should try it! It’s one of the ways humans bond, you know, over meals, and there’s something to it.”

That was an incredibly useful piece of information, and it explained rather a lot. Castiel snatched the bread—the part with the heel. “I see.” He looked at it. “How do I eat this?” It was too big to put in his mouth, and he’d seen Sam use forks before.

“With butter in jam; here.” The demon passed over those two very things. “Crack the bread in pieces and spread the butter with a knife, and then jam with a different knife, otherwise Aziraphale will smite you dead.” He smiled, a tentative thing. It was a—a joke, Castiel realized. Human-style. The Fallen was making a joke.

He’d been joking with Aziraphale earlier, too. That was banter, similar to Sam and Dean except—except it had a different quality to it. It was gentler, Castiel realized. Sam and Dean sniped back and forth, and those boys would do anything for each other, it was true, but there was real anger there, sometimes. This was teasing, but without any heat or any underlying trauma. How was that possible? From one of the Fallen, a vanishingly rare, absolutely vicious Greater Demon? 

“Angel?” Crowley said nervously.

“Stop staring, dear, you’re making him uncomfortable,” Aziraphale said, tapping on Castiel’s shoulder.

“This is terribly strange,” Castiel told Aziraphale plaintively.

“The bread or the demon?” Aziraphale asked.

“Both.”

“Ah,” said Crowley. “I suppose you were expecting more brimstone?”

“Something like that. The Fallen are—incredibly dangerous. Where I’m from.”

Crowley put some butter on his bread, placid as a summer day. “Here too. Let me put it this way. Most demons spend their lives in Hell. I have spent little to no time Down There. It is awful and miserable, and I much prefer Earth, where I have spent the rest of my time. Also, I’m retired. I don’t hurt people anymore.” He switched to jam.

That was mind-boggling. “Demons love to hurt people.”

“Not this demon,” said Crowley. “I wasn’t twisted like they were.”

Castiel stared again. That was difficult to believe. He swung his head around and looked to Aziraphale.

“He is telling the truth,” said Aziraphale. “And he has been my companion on Earth for six thousand years. I know when he’s lying.”

“You do not,” Crowley shot back, amused.

“Of course I do.”

“Titanic, 1912. I had you convinced I sank it.”

“That was _one time! _For _ten minutes!_”

Castiel buttered and then jammed his bread, listening to them banter. He nibbled, following Aziraphale’s example, and found it pleasingly crunchy and sweet. The two bickered over his head like humans, familiar and clearly, even to Castiel, very fond.

Terribly, terribly strange. But he liked the bread.

When he finished it, Aziraphale gave him a croissant. This he knew; Sam had eaten these sometimes. But it flaked in his hand, and it wasn’t as—well, as sad-looking as Sam’s always were. It was buttery and wonderful on his tongue. He’d thought eating was overrated, but this was actually quite lovely.

The angel and the demon were bickering over Pompeii, and some egg dish in Pompeii. Crowley had apparently cooked it for a human, but incorrectly, according to Aziraphale. They were both grinning, even the demon, who had relaxed. They seemed to have entirely forgotten Castiel.

He poured himself another cocoa and contemplated another croissant. 

He was concerned about the demon, but he decided that he was no longer frightened, as Crowley gestured and spilled his cocoa. No demon could drink cocoa and still be frightening, Castiel thought, amused, especially not Aziraphale’s cocoa, which tasted like warmth and sweetness.

“Listen,” Crowley was insisting, “Publius Aurelius was an ass, Aziraphale. I don’t care about the good works he did in Pompeii – it all got buried under a volcano anyway!”

“Oh, he was a horrid person, I grant you, my dear,” Aziraphale said. “You’ve a scar on your thigh from him! An actual scar! He got what he deserved, for sure[4]. I signed the papers that barred him from Heaven, you know.”

Crowley sat up straighter. “You did?”

“Of course! Of course I did, my dear. After what he did to you! I do have a commendation for what he did with the roads, though.” The last was regretful. “It allowed the archaeologists to find the whole city, a thousand years later.”

“Well, at least you got a pat on the back from the whole sorry business,” Crowley said. “Awful bloody man[5].”

“Long dead of course,” Aziraphale murmured, comforting. “Castiel, you told me you stopped your apocalypse, too,” he said lightly. “You seemed fond of your Earth as well.”

“You what?” the demon spluttered, “Seriously? That’s brilliant!” Actual, unbridled enthusiasm. Strange, strange demon.

“Did I not tell you that?”

“You did not! How did you do it?” Crowley leaned closer to Castiel, eager.

“It is not a happy story, my dear,” Aziraphale cautioned.

But Castiel had been listening, and he thought he maybe got the hang of this. “One of my friends allowed himself to be possessed by Lucifer before diving headfirst back to Hell, thus sacrificing himself and saving the world,” he said.

Crowley gaped at him. There was a brief, awkward silence. “Well, that’s awful,” he said, finally.

“Yes, it was,” Castiel agreed.

There was another silence.

“Not a great conversationalist, are you?” Crowley asked.

“Not particularly, no.”

“My dear!” Azirapahle scolded the demon. “Don’t listen to him; you’ve been a lovely conversationalist.” He smiled encouragingly. Castiel thought, abstractly, that he liked Aziraphale quite a bit.

“No, I’m—really quite bad at it, truth be told,” Castiel told Aziraphale regretfully.

Crowley snorted. “Hey, first step’s admitting it. What happened to your wings?”

“Crowley!”

“What! I’m asking an honest question! They look like someone stepped on them!”

“There is war in Heaven,” Castiel said defensively.

“Again?” Crowley asked. He sounded dismayed.

“Yes. Raphael wants to rule and begin the end of the world again. I wished to stop him. I have failed.” He looked morosely into his cocoa. 

“Not yet you haven’t,” the demon told him softly. When Castiel looked back at those strange sunglasses of his, he said, “Aziraphale’s the best researcher this world has ever seen. Don’t you worry. If you want to get back there to save your world, we’ll get you back there.”

That was… surprising. “Why do you care?”

“One apocalypse is one too many.” Crowley shrugged. “But if I can help stop a second one, without being in any actual danger myself, that’s a real feather in my cap, yeah?”

Weird reasoning, but then, weird demon. “Thank you,” Castiel said.

“But you need time,” Aziraphale told him firmly. “I want you well again, first, before I send you haring off to the end of the world, understand? I’m more than certain that we can send you back to the moment you left; that’s where the hole is freshest, after all. Stay with us for a week or so. Rest. Recover.”

He should get back quickly. But if they could send back to—to just the correct moment—

Castiel sighed. He nodded. “Thank you,” he murmured.

“Don’t mention it,” said Crowley.

___________________________

[1] And he was deeply annoyed about it. Bloody bookshop only had one bloody bed—the one in which he spent his nights happily curled around Aziraphale, but which was currently inhabited by some strange, sick angel. Ugh. Why. No way in Above or Below was he leaving Aziraphale alone with a possible-spy, possible-psychopath (not that Crowley could do anything if he got violent), so he napped on the sofa in the back room, cursing Heaven, Hell, angels in general and Aziraphale in particular.

[2] That was deeply strange. Corporeal feathers in physical space physically ruffling. Bizarre. 

[3] Crowley had bought a few demi-baguettes because watching Aziraphale consume an entire baguette was just embarrassing. At least this way everything looked civilized.

[4] The scar was a brand high on the inside of Crowley’s right thigh. A weird, faded squiggle, it was supposed to be a trident. Aziraphale hated it, absolutely and utterly, because of its placement and what it meant. Publius Aurelius had heated the iron in holy fire; that was the only way to get it to scar, and it meant Aziraphale couldn’t heal it. Aziraphale had taken great pleasure in barring that man from Heaven. May he rot in Hell, for hurting his Crowley. 

[5] The scar had hurt for years, but worse had been the fear, for that bastard had finally figured out how to hurt him for real. He knew Crowley wasn’t human, and though Romans had no concept of angels and demons, they had naiads and dryads and that sort of thing, near enough for him to understand. He’d adored having Crowley under his thumb. When the scar healed, or healed enough that he felt like he wouldn’t limp, he’d sent for Aziraphale, finally at the end of his rope. Aziraphale, who had been in Gaul at the time, responded quickly. He’d made his way to Pompeii, and he’d taken one look at Crowley and bought him on the spot, and he’d swindled dear old Publius, too. The Arrangement had been young then, but Aziraphale had given him manumission papers right away, and got him out of Pompeii, whole and mostly hale. The scar throbbed, but the angel had come for him, and that was what mattered. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note - I do write book Good Omens, with some sprinkling of TV Good Omens for flavor. The resolution of the Four Horsepeople in the book is just a little different, but the spirit and the feel is the same. It's still the Them; they just do it a little differently.

Life went slow, and it went strange.

Aziraphale and Crowley bickered nearly constantly, but they also laughed, free and clear the way Sam and Dean never did.

It turned out that Aziraphale’s bookshop was fascinating: it was almost like a fractal—small at first glance, but the corners seemed to unfold, and he had more books than Castiel had ever seen in one place, including Bobby Singer’s haphazard hunter’s library. He mostly had books on prophecy and bibles, but peppered here and there were books on the arcane and the occult. He also had novels and a few ancient-looking scrolls tucked in corners, and, strangely, a great many first editions of children’s adventure books. 

But the highlights, as Aziraphale had suggested before, were actually the meals.

It was Crowley who taught him, with surprising patience and without touching him at all, how to winch in his wings. The process was different than it was at home, but also quite simple, once he had the hang of it. Having learned to hide his wings, he gained the freedom to walk about in the world. The pain from Raphael’s weapons receded further the next day, enough that they took him out.

Castiel was expecting burgers. They took him someplace called the Ritz instead. There were no burgers at the Ritz. There was meat, but no burgers. To be quite frank, it was rather eye opening. It was simply—so different from anything Sam or Dean ever did.

“That’s because they’re American,” Crowley told him, amused. “Americans have no taste. Also, Aziraphale’s a food snob like none other.”

“I am not!”

Castiel smiled down at his plate of scallops. He was learning. “I hate to say it, but I think he’s right,” he said gravely.

“I am absolutely astonished that you would agree with that foul fiend!” Aziraphale said, but his eyes danced, and Castiel felt a strange surge of absolute triumph: he was in on the joke.

He was never in on the joke.

“Foul fiend knows what he’s talking about,” Crowley said with a wink. He sipped his wine.

Castiel chuckled softly. It was a joke. Truly a joke. These two had been mortal enemies for so long that they had foregone violence as pointless. They played games. They enjoyed each other’s company. That they were enemies was something Sam had once termed _an inside joke. _What a beautiful, incredible alternate world. What a beautiful, incredible pair they were. Why, they had been on Earth for so long, and understood it so deeply, that they were nearly human themselves, without ever losing an ounce of who and what they were.

Castiel envied them like had envied nothing else in life, for he had been losing pieces of himself in avalanches from the moment he met Dean Winchester. But he also liked them, even the demon Crowley. They were--kind, and terribly interesting. 

“Try the wine,” Aziraphale told him after a moment, and he did.

Castiel had had wine before. This was much different, and much nicer.

“Sip it slower now,” Crowley told him after he swallowed. “It’s not a cheap shot. It’ll change on your palette over time. What have these Americans done to you, that you don’t know this?”

Castiel opened his mouth to reply and the wine did change; fascinating. “You’re right,” he said, astonished.

“Course I’m right. I’m the wine snob.” Crowley grinned like the demon he was.

“Oh, you!” said Aziraphale. 

“Oh, me,” said Crowley. He drank more of his wine. “What about you, Castiel, are you developing a taste for food?”

“I like the scallops,” Castiel said, honestly. “They’re different from what Sam or Dean eats, but I like them.” He cut up another one. “The texture is pleasing,” he added, and ate another bite.

“What do they usually eat?” Aziraphale asked.

“Burgers for Dean. Salad for Sam.”

“Americans,” Crowley said, disgusted. “I bet the salad is sad, too. Like Caesar salad or something, but without any proper anchovies. American chain restaurants. Am I right?”

Castiel nodded, puzzled.

“You, my friend, have suffered food-abuse,” Crowley said, pointing at him with his fork. “No wonder you're avoiding food; the only thing on offer is _awful_. I bet you’ve even eaten some of Sable’s junk without even knowing it. Oh—wait—I guess you don’t have Sable, do you?”

“Sable?”

“Famine,” said Aziraphale, daintily cutting his duck. “He runs several fast food chains in America, here.”

Castiel gaped at him. “That does not make sense.”

“Oh, yeah it does,” said Crowley lightly. “He’s a clever bastard, old Sable. He’s _adapted_ to the times. He makes food that has no nutritional value whatsoever. You eat it, but you’re still starving.”

Very strange. “In my world, Famine is old and sickly, for he had been severely weakened. Agriculture has vastly improved.”

“Hmm. Didn’t adapt,” Crowley clucked. “Stupid. Humans move fast. Gotta keep up.”

“It was a good thing he didn’t,” Castiel said morosely. “We might have lost, if he had.”

“Your world sounds like one long nightmare,” Crowley told him frankly. “A little boy threw some grass at Famine here, and he became a set of scales. It was great.” He popped a small potato in his mouth. “Gotta love human ingenuity.”

A set of scales? “I do not understand,” Castiel said.

“Yeah, me neither,” said Crowley.

“It was a metaphor, dear,” Aziraphale sighed. He stole a potato off Crowley’s plate. Crowley didn’t so much as protest.

And Castiel felt—comfortable enough to ask, “What is the significance of that gesture?”

“Which?” Aziraphale asked, munching the potato.

“Stealing my food? Long association, trust, affection,” Crowley rattled off. “It’d be weird if you did it without asking. Don’t. But you can offer him a scallop and he’ll take it. That’s friendship, though some humans hate that, so it varies from person to person. Aziraphale, for example, won’t offer you anything back. It’s not an insult; it’s just how he is.” He ate another potato, swallowed. “Taking you to the Ritz is his version of sharing food.”

So nuanced! “Food is significant,” Castiel said slowly.

“Oh very,” said Aziraphale. He eyed Castiel’s scallops, clearly wanting one. Waiting for permission. Interesting.

“You may have one,” Castiel said, and Aziraphale stole it. It made him feel rather warm, warm enough to look to Crowley and say, “You may also have one.”

Crowley looked taken aback, but then he smiled, pleased. “And I’m going to teach you something else,” he said, gently. “Saying no isn’t a refusal or an insult; it means I don’t like scallops. But thank you. Want a potato?” The potatoes were all that was left; Crowley had devoured his steak very quickly, likely so Aziraphale could not steal it.

Castiel took the potato and munched. It was also pleasant on his tongue; nothing like Dean’s french fries. 

Food was significant. Aziraphale and Crowley kept feeding him. That had to be significant, too. How could Crowley be so kind? How could Aziraphale? So, so strange, this world. But it was nice.

Friendship, Crowley said. “Thank you,” he told them both, sincerely. “I have not experienced kindness in this manner—ever, I think.” Even Dean, who was his own human, his dearest friend, hadn’t sat with him and patiently explained the significance of food. On a fundamental level, Dean was a different species; these things came naturally to him. They did not come naturally to Castiel, nor to Aziraphale or Crowley. They’d learned, through long years, and they shared that knowledge, kindly, patiently, with Castiel. It was like a revelation. They understood what baffled him and why, and they both seemed to delight in his desire to learn. It was…. somehow comforting, and almost a relief. 

“Your world is a nightmare and don’t mention it,” Crowley was muttering. He sipped his wine, and then changed the subject. 

\---

It was Crowley who took him to feed the ducks the next day, when Aziraphale escorted them to the doors of the bookshop and then slammed them unceremoniously on their backsides.

“He doesn’t like company when he’s doing heavy research,” Crowley said, apparently not bothered. “Come on. Let’s go to St. James.” He tilted his head to an old-style car, crouched on the street beside a fairly clear sign that indicated that parking was forbidden.

Castiel understood cars. Dean adored his car, and Crowley was clearly very fond of this one. He did not mention the sign.

“Dean drives an Impala,” Castiel told Crowley. He’d offered Castiel a potato, and he’d fallen asleep on Aziraphale’s shoulder last night, after watching a movie called Titanic. They had all consumed a great deal of alcohol, even Castiel, who had wondered loudly at the hubris of humans, building a ship they called unsinkable. Two tears had rolled down Crowley’s cheeks, under his ubiquitous sunglasses, over the course of the movie. Castiel had some inkling that this meant Crowley was a sensitive soul, but that made no sense, because he was also a Greater Demon. Sitting alone in a car with him was—somewhat alarming, or it would be. Castiel was passing certain that he could utterly destroy Crowley, if it came down to a fight. He doubted it would come down to it.

“What’s the year?” Crowley asked.

“1967.”

“Not bad, not bad,” Crowley said lightly. “This is a 1926 Bentley. I’ve had it from new, mostly[1]. With apologies to your Dean, but the Bentley could eat that Impala for breakfast.”

Castiel huffed with offence, but he saw the curl of amusement around Crowley’s lips. “You’re teasing me.”

“Little bit. You’re fun to tease. So serious, Castiel! But I suppose that comes of living in Nightmare World.”

Castiel snorted. “That’s what you’re calling it.” He wasn’t wrong. The monsters, the apocalypse, the war that he had lost where angels murdered angels—all something out of a nightmare.

“Absolutely. I _have_ heard your stories. Here, in a normal world, you and I are going to feed the ducks like civilized beings.” He drove.

The music that blared out of the speakers was unfamiliar, not something that Dean ever listened to. Crowley rolled his eyes hard enough that it was clear he was doing it even with the sunglasses, and he turned the volume down low enough for them to talk[2].

_Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me—for meee! _said the speakers.

He didn’t make a deal, Castiel realized, thinking of Beelzebub as they roared at an improbable speed through a very crowded city. It had been three days, and Crowley had not made a single offer. He glanced at the demon and decided to ask.

“You haven’t attempted to make a deal with me,” he said slowly.

Crowley snorted. “What on earth could you possibly have that I would want? I have my Bentley, I have Aziraphale, a flat in Mayfair, my plants and the bookshop. I have all of Earth to explore. Why would I want anything from you?”

Castiel sighed and looked down at his hands. “Demons always want,” he said quietly.

“I _have_ everything I want,” Crowley said, and he sounded perfectly at peace. Castiel felt a stab of envy. “Well,” he added after a moment. “I want a new begonia. The last one wasn’t up to snuff. But that’s attainable.”

“That is a—flower,” Castiel said slowly.

“Yep. I keep plants.”

“You keep plants.”

“Oh, yes. The best ones are in Mayfair, and the rest are in the bookshop. Aziraphale spoils them.”

Castiel stared at him. “Have you ever considered that you have gone insane?”

“Oh, I’m well past insane,” Crowley told him cheerfully. He rounded a corner at breakneck speed. Castiel, used to Dean’s driving, didn’t blink. “Totally ‘round the twist, me.”

Castiel chuffed a small laugh. “I suspect I am as well,” he confided.

“Course you are,” said Crowley warmly. “Aziraphale only likes the crazy ones, didn’t you know? For the record, I like you much better than Islington or Raguel[3].”

“Who are they?”

Crowley screeched to a halt in a parking space that Castiel was fairly certain hadn’t existed a minute ago. “C’mon,” he said, “I’ll explain on the way.”

He followed Crowley through a set of wrought-iron, ornate gates into a man-made park of green. He inhaled, and amidst the great city he could smell the plant life, and it was lovely.

“Yeah,” said Crowley fondly, watching him, “I like this place too. Come on—ducks won’t feed themselves.”

Castiel followed him on a meandering stroll, concrete paths and lush green grass with great, old trees arching up around them. But he was too curious to let it go. “Who are Islington and Raguel?”

“Oh, they’re Aziraphale’s creepy band of broken toys,” Crowley said cheerfully. “Islington is an angel caged under London – long story – but it’s a total nutcase, like a real psychopath. Aziraphale is technically its jailer, but he visits it every so often, and always comes back totally freaked out.” He frowned.

“Then why keep visiting?”

Crowley bowed his head a little. He sighed and didn’t answer for a long while. They walked in step up the paved path. People and their dogs strolled past them, and Castiel waited patiently for the demon to reply.

“Compassion, I think,” Crowley said at last. “He told me once that even the worst criminal deserves visitors. Utter shit, if you ask me. Islington’s insane, and violent, too, mark my words. It looks all docile in its pen, but the second it gets out, it’s going to start making trouble. Stupid angel.” The last was whispered under his breath with a shake of his head. It was clear he was talking about Aziraphale and not Islington.

“You love him,” Castiel realized, and he felt a fool. It had been perfectly obvious from the start. He’d even kind of known it from the start. It was like knowing each human had a soul – so obvious he had ignored it for the sake of convenience.

“Keep your voice down,” Crowley hissed. “Don’t know who could be listening! A demon can get in real trouble for something like that, you know.”

“But you don’t deny it.” He marveled at Crowley. How was a being such as him possible?

“Of course not. You’ve _met_ Aziraphale. It’s completely impossible not to.”

He had a point. If Aziraphale were Castiel’s brother in truth, he would most certainly be his favorite, and it had only been three days. “How has he maintained such kindness?”

“Beats me. Most angels are arseholes. I mean, no offence.”

Castiel huffed an amused breath. “I am also an arsehole,” he said, wry.

Crowley chuckled. “I believe it. Here we are.”

The duck pond was quite large, as it turned out, and there weren’t only ducks: two black swans beelined toward Crowley, clearly recognizing him. Crowley procured two bags of what looked like corn kernels. Castiel took one when it was offered, puzzled.

“We found out a while ago that bread was bad for them,” Crowley explained. He tossed some kernels at the black swan, who gobbled it up.

“You are a demon,” Castiel reminded him.

Crowley smiled. The swan gave a squawk and abruptly sank, before bobbing to the surface, hissing angrily. It flared out its wings and bunched its neck aggressively, but Crowley lowered his sunglasses looked out to the bird. It reared back and flapped its wings again, threatening, but under that glare it subsided, muttering under its breath[4].

Castiel’s own breath caught. He hadn’t seen Crowley’s eyes before then.

They were yellow, and slitted like a serpent. That slit was his saving grace: while Castiel had never met Azazel in truth, he knew his story, and he knew the haunted look in Sam and Dean’s eyes whenever they spoke of ‘Yellow Eyes.’

Crowley pushed his glassed back up. “Alright? I wasn’t going to drown it, Castiel,” he added, like that was what was bothering him. “It’s just a game.”

“Your eyes,” Castiel said. “They’re yellow.”

Crowley cocked his head, like he was puzzled about where Castiel was going with this. “Yeah. Serpent. Your first form—it stays with you.”

First form. First form. Surely not. “The Serpent of Eden?” he asked, shocked.

“Mm,” Crowley agreed. “Aziraphale was the angel of the Eastern Gate. We met in the Garden, you know.”

“You tempted him,” Castiel growled, a strange, protective feeling welling in his chest for kind Aziraphale.

“No,” Crowley said. He tossed corn kernels to the ducks but didn’t sink any more of them. “I never did, not with anything real, not with anything that mattered[5].” He paused and looked down at the kernels in his hand. “Corrupting Aziraphale would do nothing, really. He would Fall. And I would lose my best friend. D’you know what Falling _does_ to an angel, Castiel?” He looked up, and Castiel could feel those strange eyes on him through the sunglasses.

“You become human,” Castiel said softly. “You die. You become a demon.”

“No,” said Crowley. “Not here. Your wings burn. And if that doesn’t drive you mad, the absence of Heaven’s touch does. And if _that_ doesn’t drive you mad, then Hell does. I couldn’t do that to Aziraphale. Not to _Aziraphale_. He’d be—” he swallowed. “He’d be a vicious demon, you know.” He sounded heartbroken at the very thought.

Yellow eyes, Castiel thought, staring. Yellow eyes and the Serpent of Eden and he might be lying. But lies didn’t make sense, after what he had learned of Crowley. It had only been a few days but—but that gentle soul, Castiel thought. The one who offered him potatoes and cried at Titanic and never offered him a deal, so unlike any other demon he knew. “How did you stay sane?” he asked.

“Luck,” said Crowley. “Dumb luck. I got an Earthly posting, and the best Adversary anyone could ask for.” He smiled.

Strange, strange world. “Where I am from,” Castiel said slowly, “A yellow-eyed demon tormented Sam and Dean Winchester. It killed their mother, and it killed Sam’s girlfriend, and it drove Sam to the height of depravity. It drove him to start the apocalypse.”

Crowley jerked. He looked taken aback. “I _stopped_ the apocalypse,” he said cautiously. “And even when I was working, I didn’t do one-on-one temptations like that. I don’t kill people; it’s against the Rules. And I don’t corrupt people. People corrupt themselves.”

“What did you do?” Castiel asked, needing the reassurance, though he didn’t say that.

“Oh, stuff like black outs, taking down phone lines—my best was the London M-25, you know; it’s in the shape of an Odegra.” He looked very proud of himself. “Traffic jams, frustration: spreading low grade evil to millions of souls, and you hardly have to lift a finger.”

Castiel blinked at him. “You are very strange. Most demons like making deals.”

“Yeah, making deals is a good way to get exorcised,” Crowley said wryly. “Someone figures it out eventually. Besides, it’s not going to get you the kind of result a good traffic jam will.” He shrugged.

“You are the Serpent of Eden. You tempted Eve.” Shocked rage rose in Castiel like smoke from a fire. Everything, everything had been Crowley’s fault—

“No, I told her that if she was sick of Adam acting like such a know-it-all because he was older, she should try eating that fruit over there and then she’ll know more than him. It’s not like she didn’t know it was the Tree of Knowledge. Everyone knew. And I didn’t lie to her, either.”

His voice rose above Crowley’s. “There would be no _suffering_, if you hadn’t—”

“There’s always suffering,” Crowley snapped, truly annoyed for the first time. “If I hadn’t been there, they would have eaten it eventually out of sheer boredom. Don’t you get it? That’s just how humans _are._ Or Eve would have gone the way of Lilith, and Him Above would have made his pet a new mate, and on and on ‘til Adam had no ribs left, and he’d die old and well-sexed and stupid, and that would be the end of humanity. What a _waste_, don’t you think?”

“You’re tempting me now,” Castiel growled.

“I’m _talking_ to you now.” Crowley said, exasperated. “Weren’t you lissstening? I never tempted Aziraphale. Oh, to dinner and to eat some chocolate, buy another book maybe, but not where it mattered, not in his soul. I never crossed that line[6]. What makes you think I’d do that to you? I mean really, Castiel! What’s there to gain? One more mad Fallen swimming around in the pit? You’re not even from this world! What’s the _point_?”

Castiel looked down at his little bag of corn kernels, and he wasn’t sure. He felt unsteady and confused, which wasn’t that surprising, given that he was talking to the Serpent of Eden. Crowley had been the Serpent of Eden this _whole time_. Was he playing a, a long game?

But then Aziraphale didn’t make sense. Aziraphale wasn’t Fallen. Aziraphale wasn’t even close to Fallen. Aziraphale was terribly sure of himself, surer of himself than Castiel was, frankly. “How could he trust you?” he asked.

Crowley’s shoulders slumped. “I have no idea,” he said, and he sounded upset. “He listened to me from the sstart. He trusted me in increments. He loved me—right at the Beginning and not ‘til the End, all at once.”

He wasn’t lying. Any demon from home would have an elaborate story, some ridiculous ruse, smug and smug and smug. Crowley just looked sad.

And Aziraphale was so kind. And Crowley was too—he was patient, and he brought food, and he drove Castiel to the ducks—

He looked down at his corn kernels. He tossed some to the ducks. “I believe you,” he said quietly, and he couldn’t believe that he was saying those words. “I think I’ve lost my mind.”

“Well, join the club,” Crowley said. He exhaled. “I am way too sober for this conversation,” he muttered.

Castiel chuckled softly. “Is this what you do with Aziraphale?”

“Feed ducks, get roaringly drunk, and then discuss theology? Pretty much.”

Now Castiel laughed in truth. “I wish—” he said, and then stopped, because wishing was dangerous.

“Mm?”

But then, this world was not his world, and he found himself spilling his thoughts to the demon, a fool through and through. “I wish my world was as kind as yours,” he said. “I wish that I had a demon counterpart with whom I could drink and debate, and we would exchange no blows.” Crowley – the one from his world, the scheming King of Hell, most certainly did not count. There was no universe where Castiel could ever trust that demon enough to voluntarily share a bottle of wine with him. There was no universe in which that Crowley could ever be tamed, the way this Crowley was. A deal was a deal, and that was all.

“Oh, there were blows,” Crowley said dryly. “At the start, sometimes. We just—well, we got bored.”

“You never hurt him,” Castiel said, and he was certain now.

Crowley smiled, a small, secret smile. “No. And he never hurt me, not really.”

A demon with a gentle soul. How—how utterly miraculous. Yellow eyes but a kind heart; he tormented the ducks without ever really harming them, and he’d stopped feeding them bread because it was bad for them. Castiel felt—stunned.

He tossed some more corn, and they stood in companionable silence for a long while. The ducks skimmed over to them and gobbled up their feast. He envied them their simple lives.

When he ran out of corn, he asked, “Who is Raguel?”

Crowley huffed, amused. “Raguel is the other angel,” he said dryly. “Aziraphale found him a few years ago in North America. Los Angeles, actually. Do you have a Raguel in your world?” He asked it like he knew the answer.

“No,” said Castiel.

“Thought not. Everyone here who knows him has kind of a – violent reaction to his name. Long story short, he was the catalyst to the Fall. He didn’t cause it. He just sort of—started the chain reaction, unwittingly.”

Castiel cocked his head, fascinated. “How?”

Crowley sighed. “Well. Do you have a Hall of Being?”

“We did. Belial destroyed the Hall in the Rebellion, before it Fell. I believe it was unmade somewhere in the Pit shortly after.”

“Huh,” Crowley said thoughtfully. “He wanted to burn it, here. He’s a he, here—made it to Earth, a time or two. Lucifer stopped him before he burnt anything[7]. And good thing, too; we make our bodies out of material from the Hall. Even in Hell—Azazel stole a bunch of raw firmament before the Fall.”

“Here is where we diverge, then,” Castiel murmured.

“I think it’s more than just that, but yeah. Anyway, once upon a time, there were two angels. They worked in the Hall of Being. They were working on _Love_. When the project was over, they moved on to _Death_. The angel Saraquael still loved its partner, though, and, trying to make the pain stop, it murdered Carasel. Raguel, the Vengeance, he smote Saraquael, and this made Lucifer question. All of us, really.” He smiled crookedly. “It’s the only thing Aziraphale and I really fight about, anymore. We don’t talk about it much.”

Castiel knew that story, but with Michael instead of Raguel. “It was _Hatred_,” he said slowly. “In my world. Carasel and Saraquael were working on _Hatred_. And Michael destroyed Saraquael.”

“Huh,” said Crowley. “That, I think, is where we diverge.”

“Maybe,” said Castiel, fascinated.

They meandered through the park. Crowley seemed to know his way. Conversation became easier; together they hunted for the divergence, and the more they spoke, the more apparent the differences in their worlds became. Monsters were few and far between, Crowley assured him, and there were indeed hunters—except here they called them hedgewitches, and their spells were deadly dangerous to a demon. Crowley steered clear. A human had tried to trap him once, and Aziraphale had roared in, all avenging angel, and broken the Binding, setting him free. Crowley’s smile had gone soft at that story, because he was in love, Castiel realized, and it was genuine. And the strange thing was that he could _feel it, _in little faint flashes. He realized it as they were walking, that he had felt it all along. This was not something he could feel at home.

“Oh, yeah, that’s an angel thing here,” Crowley told Castiel casually when he asked. “The love-sense. Aziraphale can do it too, don’t worry about it. The rules are different here, right?”

“Very strange,” Castiel said, but he was—comforted. Real love. He had decided to trust Crowley, as absurd as that was, but feeling love in him helped. Strange, strange demon.

_____________

[1] It burned up once, but the nice Antichrist gave it back. Crowley wasn’t sure whether or not to consider it the same car. He mostly did.

[2]He’s upgraded to CDs at some point after the Apocalypse but the bloody car still had opinions. The more things change, the more they stay the same. He hoped Castiel liked Queen because that was all he was getting, apparently. He’d left that CD in there for more than a fortnight, after all. Crowley was frankly afraid to get an ipod or load music onto his iphone. Elvis only knew what the Bentley would do to it, if given the chance. He stuck with CDs.

[3] The Michael Debacle wasn’t due to happen yet; Angel Network consisted of three angels and one bewildered demon. Well. Soon to be four angels, including Castiel.

[4] Look. Crowley had got into enough fights with swans over the years in this specific park that he knew how to win them—or so he thought. The swans knew differently: they knew who he was, of course, and had for generations. If any of them broke the demon’s leg, he might not come back, but more importantly, that angel might show up and smite them all. Not worth the fight.

[5] He’d had the thought, at the Start. Good and Evil were just names for sides, but there were ways and ways to convince someone to switch. Crowley had thought about it. Aziraphale should never belong to Lucifer and his pack of weirdos, he had finally decided, drunk enough to be ill in a tavern in Mesopotamia. Temptations for food and drink and fun only. Drunken theological discussions were a good time. But tempting him to Doubt, real Doubt, the kind that cost you your halo, was off limits. Anyway, how would Aziraphale read at night, if he didn’t have his halo?

[6] They had swapped, sometimes, for convenience sake, back when they were working. Crowley gave Aziraphale easy jobs. A fellow already fallen: tempt him to drink in excess. Tempt this fellow to envy, that to avarice. Never, ever anything that could make Aziraphale Capital-D-Doubt. No great Fall, not for his angel, not ever. Likewise, Aziraphale had seemed to take similar care – public works here, charity there—nothing to even hint at thoughts of Capital-R-Redemption. It was an unspoken, undiscussed part of their Arrangement, but Crowley felt rather passionately about it.

[7] “Don’t burn it, you idiot, we’re using it to cover our flank! Honestly, it’s like you _want_ to lose.”


	4. Chapter 4

Time passed. Aziraphale had books and books of arcane symbols, Enochian scrawled on pages and pages, directing the universe into great symphonies.

Crowley corrected his grammar once, and, much to Castiel’s amusement, Aziraphale threw a cushion at him.

“You need to take a break,” Crowley told him, finally. “You’re twisting your _casos a_nd your _basos; _you’re exhausted.”

_Casos_ and _basos_ were difficult concepts to explain in English; they were similar to a formal and informal tone, except they applied to That Which Is and That Which May Be, and also to terrestrial air and celestial air, all rolled into one, except for when they switched.

“I am not,” Aziraphale told him indignantly.

“Yes you are,” Castiel told him, because he could see over his shoulder. “It’s alright. You’re tired.”

“I don’t get tired,” Aziraphale said crossly.

“Confused, then,” said Crowley. “You definitely get confused. And creativity is no angel’s strong suit. You’re writing a complex spell from nothing and you’re getting tangled in your own thoughts. Come on. Take a break. Castiel won’t mind, will you Castiel?”

Castiel had been promised that he would be deposited in the exact moment he had been stolen from, so all extra time spent in this lovely place was, hopefully, a pleasant diversion without consequence. “I do not mind,” he said.

Aziraphale pushed himself back from his desk. “I could use a break,” he said wearily.

Crowley glanced at Castiel—obvious even with the sunglasses—and then to Aziraphale. “I could do your wings?” he offered. 

Aziraphale smiled at him. “That would be lovely, dear,” he said, then cocked his head at Castiel. “I could fix yours, after,” he offered, tentative. “If you want. They must itch terribly.”

Castiel stared at him.

They did itch.

They itched like the itchiest thing he had ever encountered. He did not think it was possible for anything to itch as much as his wings itched. They even itched when he was incorporeal, a nagging, burning sensation. He was leading a rebellion, and he looked like he had been dragged backwards through a rosebush. His wings were terrible, and they had been terrible for years: sometime after meeting Dean, he had stopped trusting his brethren behind him.

His wings had been driving him mad ever since. He dared not ask anyone in Heaven to fix them, and his humans—well. He preferred their eyes intact.

And here was Aziraphale, a kind, strange angel from a kind, strange world, asking to fix them. Not one of his brothers. Not involved in the war—and if he had been, he would most definitely be on Castiel’s side. He had helped stop the apocalypse in this world, as Castiel had in his own. Kind-hearted, gentle Aziraphale.

Aziraphale… would be acceptable, Castiel realized with some surprise.

He glanced at Crowley. He genuinely liked Crowley. He did not want any demon, ever, to touch his wings, especially one of the Fallen, even if it was Crowley. But Crowley seemed to know that, because he shrugged, unoffended.

“I—they do itch,” he told Aziraphale, hesitant. “We’re at war,” he added lamely. “And you are tired, Aziraphale, I could not ask you to—”

“Nonsense! Preening is no trouble. Let’s fix them, shall we?” Aziraphale told him. “Crowley will do mine first, and then I can do yours. Come along! We’ve the proper chairs upstairs.”

Castiel followed them, feeling absurdly shy. He wanted to protest that Aziraphale fixing his wings was not resting, but to be frank, he dearly wanted the preening. It had been so very long.

“Go take a shower,” Crowley told him, pointing to the bathroom. “Wash your hair. You’ll feel better for it. I know it’s a human thing, but trust me. Keep your wings in; it’s terrible when they’re wet. Go on.”

Castiel did as he was told. The shower was complicated to operate[1], as the hot water took some time to heat up, but in the end Crowley was correct. It felt good to wash his hair and his skin manually, rather than disallowing any grime to stick. Now that he knew there was a preening in his future, his wings itched something fierce.

There were new clothes by the door. Castiel suspected that Crowley had done that, as they were of a far nicer quality than his original clothes.

When he emerged, he found them in the sitting room, and he found them because, astonished, he could hear Aziraphale’s happy thrums. He hadn’t heard an angel’s thrum—in so many years. Long ago, hundreds and hundreds of years before the apocalypse, maybe thousands, all the joy seemed to have leached out of Heaven. The last time he’d heard an angel thrum had been—Balthazar, resting against him after a long day, many, many years ago. 

He didn’t remember the last time he’d made that sound, himself, though he’d come close a few times with Dean.

He followed the ghostly thrumming. Aziraphale, without a shirt, was sitting backwards on a tall-backed chair. His arms were folded along the top, his cheek resting upon them, and behind him spread one off-white wing. The other lay folded neatly on his back. Crowley was preening the first, humming an earth-song as he went. Castiel had been staying with them long enough that he recognized Queen[2], the only band his car would play for some incomprehensible reason.

“Sit, dear,” Aziraphale told Castiel softly. Castiel sat on the sofa, awkward[3].

“Good songs that aren’t Queen,” Crowley said lightly. He was using a—well, there wasn’t a word for it in English, but it was a long rod, to lift Aziraphale’s feathers, spreading the powder down. So strange, still, that it was physical. “Go.”

“What?”

“I have Queen in my brain and it’s driving me mad. Please, you run around with Americans, they must listen to music.”

“They do,” Castiel told him. “Dean is very particular.” He didn’t add that it was incredibly unlikely that human music would be the same across universes. 

“Well, go on. Give me a beat.”

“You might not know it,” Castiel said.

“I have been on Earth for six thousand years. If Dean has taste, I will know it.”

Castiel was certain that Dean had better taste than Crowley. “Carry on my wayward son,” he sang tentatively.

“Drama!” laughed Crowley, all delight and he did, indeed, know the tune, alternate universe or no. “There’ll be peace when you are done—” His voice was lovely as any angel, pitch perfect, though just the smallest bit scratchy.

And this Castiel understood. He had sung with Sam and Dean in the Impala many times, and it had a strange effect on Earth, far different than in Heaven. In Heaven song was beauty, and it meant glory; on Earth, singing meant togetherness. Before, Crowley had been preening Aziraphale and they had been sharing something, the two of them; now, Crowley had somehow, as if by magic, included Castiel.

“Lay your weary head to rest,” they sang together, “Don’t you cry no more—”

They sang through the whole song while Crowley finished Aziraphale’s coverts. Aziraphale had closed his eyes again and was thrumming, a deep bass sound in time with the song. Castiel found himself relaxing into the sofa, almost wanting to thrum himself.

Fun. He was—actually having fun. It had been many, many eons since he had experienced anything like this: sitting with his friends, grooming feathers, relaxed and together. Earthly togetherness was lovely, but foreign. This was familiar as sunrise. Crowley had said that humans bonded with food; angels, of course, bonded with feathers, and fixing them. Once upon a time, when Heaven was still good, this had been what his resting moments had looked like. He, Anna and Balthazar had spent long hours together, just like this, minus the singing. The singing was nice. It was incredibly human and added a kind of spice to it.

Crowley taught Castiel We Will Rock You, afterward, though instead of stomping his feet and clapping he had Castiel burring and crooning, angel sounds, rather foreign in this playful setting. Aziraphale thrummed happily through it all, though he rolled his eyes sometimes at Crowley’s antics, and occasionally complained about their song choices, without real heat or intent. It made Castiel smile. 

They made their way through what Castiel could remember of Dean’s favorites, songs that had Crowley cackling in delight. “Good taste, your Dean,” he said, finally, and Castiel felt himself puff up with pride.

His Dean. He did like that.

Crowley finished Aziraphale’s wings with a flourish, at long last. “Better?” he asked him.

Aziraphale stood from the chair, a shirt appearing around his shoulders. He buttoned it fustily. “Oh, much,” he said. “Thank you, my dear.” He looked up and smiled into Crowley’s sunglasses. Watching closely, Castiel could see Crowley wobble a little under the force of that affection.

“Castiel?” Aziraphale asked him lightly. “The chair is yours. Crowley, will you fetch my dowel, please?”

Crowley made a _prrrrit _sound high in his throat, an angel noise, and trotted to the next room to fetch the—dowel, whatever that was.

Castiel hesitated.

“I—forgive me, we are at war, and I have not trusted my brothers at my back for some years now—” Castiel blurted, worried[4].

“I am not your brother,” Aziraphale told him gently. “More like a cousin, maybe? Regardless, I will not hurt you, Castiel. I have no stake in your war.”

Cousin. Castiel liked that. He sidled up to the chair nervously.

“You’ll need to take off your shirt, or you’ll tear it,” said Aziraphale gently.

Right. Right. Castiel unbuttoned it and tossed it to the sofa. His hands shook a little, a strange, human response. He manifested his wings.

So, so bizarre that they were corporeal. Brown and banded, they would be beautiful if the feathers laid flat. Here in this universe, they had weight and mass and wouldn’t hurt a human, not ever. He wished with all his heart that this were true at home, too. 

“There we are!” Aziraphale said brightly. “Now sit, and we can get started, hmm? Well. Once Crowley brings me the dowel.”

Castiel sat, folded his arms over the back of the chair like Aziraphale had. He felt very vulnerable.

“Got it here, angel,” said Crowley from across the room. Castiel felt his feathers ruffle, unconsciously. Crowley was a friend, he reminded himself, but he couldn’t seem to stop the flinch.

“Hey,” said Crowley lightly. “Not getting anywhere near you, yeah? Hereditary enemies and all that; I get it. I’m just gonna give this to Aziraphale, and you know what? I’m going downstairs. Possibly across town. I have some plants that need terrorizing.” He gave Aziraphale a rod—ah. They were calling it a dowel. It seemed to be made out of some kind of plant.

Castiel held his unnecessary breath until Crowley left.

“I’m going to touch your left wing,” Aziraphale said softly. He did so at Castiel’s consent, smoothing the brown feathers, and Castiel exhaled slowly.

“There you are,” Aziraphale said after a moment. “See? I’m not going to hurt you.” He smoothed the feathers down.

Castiel exhaled again, and Aziraphale hummed approval. Carefully, he took the leading edge of Castiel’s left wing and pushed it outward, spreading it. “Oh _dear,_” he said. “What a mess. Tell me what you think of this.” He tapped Castiel’s wing with the—dowel.

It felt fine. “What is it made from?” Castiel asked.

“Papyrus,” Aziraphale told him proudly. “From the Nile delta. Some of the first forms of true paper was made from papyrus, you know.”

Castiel did know this, but Aziraphale’s voice was comforting.

“Am I alright to use this, my dear?” Aziraphale asked again, tapping Castiel lightly with the dowel. “You never gave me a yes or a no.”

“It’s fine,” Castiel sighed. The dowel felt like Aziraphale – smooth like the pages of a book, musty like the shop downstairs, and it had almost a feeling like the tines of a fork, after consuming food. There was also the barest hint of Crowley too; good wine and the exhaust of the Bentley. It wasn’t threatening, as Castiel had feared; it was perfectly fine.

“Alright then,” said Aziraphale. “Where can I start? Everyone prefers something different, you know.”

“Tertiaries,” Castiel said, surprised at the consideration. Balthazar had always started with his primaries and it had been rather irritating. “Then secondaries, then coverts and primaries.”

“Excellent.” Without any more fuss, Aziraphale got to work.

Apparently sensing Castiel’s unease, he kept up a steady stream of chatter—mostly about his progress with the spell to send Castiel home, how he was struggling because there was a lunar component, and he couldn’t even read the text unless it was a proper phase of the moon. He was not, Aziraphale admitted, a natural spellcaster, but he assured Castiel that he would get him home, come Hell or high water. It simply took some time and some study.

Castiel hardly heard him.

He hadn’t had gentle fingers in his feathers since long before the war. Aziraphale took care not to tug, and though he didn’t caress the way Crowley had caressed – which was good, as that would have been uncomfortable – he was far from perfunctory. His tapping, separating, smoothing dowel spoke of friendship and trust and books and pastries and cocoa, and Castiel found himself a puddle on the chair, wanting that care so badly it ached within him. Aziraphale gave it over almost without thought: friends, he said with his hands, we are friends. It’s alright now. Your friends are human, but you have at least one who is an angel, and I understand.

“You cannot come to my world,” Castiel told him at last, overcome. “Please, never follow me. You will be slaughtered, you must stay here always and be safe, Aziraphale—”

“Easy now,” Aziraphale murmured, smoothing his alula. “Easy. I had no plans to visit your world. By all accounts it seems terrible.”

“It is, it is,” Castiel said wretchedly.

“You can stay, you know,” Aziraphale murmured after a brief silence. “You are welcome here. Heaven is not at war, and nor is Hell. We stopped our apocalypse. The world is at peace, for the time being. We could find you a flat in London. You could help me with my bookshop, or Crowley with his plants, or you could simply be, and find yourself a place here.”

It was tempting. Oh, Crowley was right: Aziraphale would be a vicious demon, because that was terribly tempting. He pictured it, as Aziraphale combed through his coverts with absolute gentleness. A home, true friends to call his own, safety. No war, no loss.

No Sam, and more importantly, no Dean. No Impala, no monster hunts. No _war_. If he left, that world would implode.

“I have to go back,” he said. “I have to stop Raphael.”

“Poor soldier,” Aziraphale told him sadly, but he made no other comment. He combed through more coverts, coating the secondaries below with powder-down. “What’s this?” he asked, at last, sing-song. “What’s this, what’s this? A sharpened feather? You didn’t say you were a Cherub.” He ran fingers carefully along his first primary. “Where are your other wings?”

“I’m not a _Cherub_,” Castiel said, jerking out of his dreamy relaxation at the insult. “What use have Cherubs for a bladed feather? I am a Seraph.” 

“I’m suspecting that our hierarchies are different,” Aziraphale said lightly, clearly amused. “I am a Principality.”

He’d already known this. Aziraphale was nothing like the vicious, territorial Principalities at home. Castiel relaxed a little. “Cherubs are small, low ranking angels in our world.”

“Here they are warriors,” Aziraphale said, and he sounded strangely regretful. “Taken as eyas to train, far from their nests. By the time they grow their feathers, they already know how to smite a shadowling. They have four wings.” He teased an ingrown feather from its itchy spot. Castiel sighed, going a little boneless.

“Very strange,” he murmured. Castiel had spent his brief time as an eyas tumbling in play with Balthazar and his nest mates. He reflected on it fondly: angels were born fully formed, but they did have to fledge, or grow their feathers. Castiel was a soldier-caste, though, and once fledged, the Archangels and Seraphs had trained his legion hard. He had only become a Seraph himself after his Father had brought him back to life.

“Hmm,” Aziraphale said thoughtfully. He closed Castiel’s left wing and started on his right, tertiaries first, how Castiel liked it. Castiel rested his cheek on his crossed arms over the back of the chair. He closed his eyes.

“Thank you,” he said, finally. “For doing this. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome,” Aziraphale told him, and he clearly meant it, too. “Very welcome indeed. When your war is over, when you’ve lost or won, you are quite welcome to retire here, you know. Oh—bother, you’ve bent this one,” he added, cross. “I think I have to clip it; I’m sorry.”

Castiel huffed, amused. That was the least of his worries. “That’s alright.”

Aziraphale clucked his tongue unhappily, but he clipped the bent feather. It pinched, just a little, because Castiel’s Grace was connected to his wings, but it was a good sort of pain, almost a relief. He hadn’t even realized that the feather had been bothering him until it was gone.

“I’ll think about it,” Castiel told him honestly, “Retiring here. I want—” he didn’t really know how to express it, but Aziraphale did.

“You want to take your humans; I understand. Do remember, though, that their lives are finite, dear Castiel. You can have both.”

That had not occurred to Castiel. “I’ll think about it,” he said again.

“Good fellow,” Aziraphale said. He started on the secondaries, and Castiel leaned into the chair. He sighed, then sighed again, and the tension wound out of him slowly, and then faster when Aziraphale started humming. He didn’t recognize the song, but there in the silence a thrum built up in his throat, and he let himself express it, long and low and content. Aziraphale patted him and kept going.

_My friend,_ Castiel thought with some relief. He felt relaxed and a little euphoric, for preening did have that effect. He thrummed low and content for the first time in centuries, and he marveled that Crowley was right: Aziraphale was so easy to love. _My dear friend._

\---

He preened Aziraphale, in thanks, the following week, and even that had been filled with laughter, and Crowley’s wry commentary. Crowley's wry commentary, the bickering, the laughter, was becoming commonplace during his stay, and it was most welcome. He found himself relaxing into it, as Aziraphale worked on that spell, as time dragged forwards. By the end, he’d even let Crowley preen him, despite his earlier misgivings[5], though the demon remained skittish when Castiel offered to return the favor.

“It’s not you,” he’d said nervously, “It’s—Hell and idiocy and, listen, I need to know you for like, a _while,_ okay[6]?”

It was alright. He’d sat on the floor in front of the of the sofa while Crowley and Aziraphale leaned shoulder to shoulder upon it, and the three of them had watched absurd Earth movies. He’d sang with Crowley in the Bentley to every Queen song imaginable and sat with Aziraphale on the roof of the bookshop to watch the sun set. He’d flown with both of them over London, just to experience the feeling of wind in his wings.

“Don’t go too fast, now,” Crowley cautioned him. “You do everything angel-fast, you miss out on the finer things in life, yeah?”

They’d greeted the dawn at England’s chilly shores, and his friends had taken him to every restaurant, and every kind of food, under the sun. Aziraphale showed him Madrid; Crowley showed him Paris. The three of them had eaten gelato in Rome, while Crowley made faces at the Vatican. Aziraphale and Crowley loved, loved, loved humans; it shone through in everything they did, everything they showed him. Castiel found it delightful.

All told, Castiel spent three months with Aziraphale and Crowley. It was, without doubt, the best three months he had ever experienced.

Except that Aziraphale had worked out the spell, at last, and it was time to go home.

“You don’t have to,” Crowley told him. They were standing in the bookshop, late at night, on a waning crescent moon. Aziraphale had insisted that the moon was important. “You could stay with us. It’s—Castiel, it’s safe here,” he said sadly.

“It is,” Castiel replied. “But the world is in danger, at home. If Raphael wins, or gains any ground at all, the apocalypse will begin again. I can’t let that happen.”

“Thought you’d say that,” Crowley sighed.

“We both did,” said Aziraphale. He strode back over from where he’d been painting Enochian on the floor. “So we got you something.” He smiled tremulously. “It was mostly Crowley’s idea.”

Castiel blinked at him. He looked back to Crowley. Crowley snapped a finger, and then held out a long, slim box. “For you,” he said.

Castiel took the box, awed. He hadn’t received a gift before. He glanced back to Aziraphale, who smiled at him encouragingly. He opened the box.

It was a tie.

It looked exactly like all his other ties, blue and human, but it was softer to the touch. A higher quality material.

“Turn it over,” Aziraphale said gently, so he did.

It still looked like a tie—except sewed in in a delicate, careful hand, was a protection spell, a strong one. He’d never seen one so strong before; when he touched it, carefully, it gave him a strange, slimy feeling. He realized that it wasn’t just ethereal, wasn’t just Aziraphale; Crowley had woven in an occult spell as well. They didn’t cancel each other out— instead, the two twined, and created something bigger, more powerful, more wonderful, and more mysterious. He had never seen anything like it. It felt rather sticky.

“What did you do,” he said, staring at the tie.

“It’s a paradox,” Aziraphale told him proudly. “We’re still—still learning how to do it properly, but if you combine the occult and ethereal you get something altogether different. Your world is so terribly frightening, Castiel—we thought you could use some protection. From both of us. It might have—unexpected properties, this tie. But it will never harm you.”

“Might give you a spot of luck,” Crowley told him. “You’ll need it, sounds like.”

Castiel nodded. “Thank you,” he told them, heartfelt. He looked back down at the tie.

“You have no idea how to put that on, do you,” Crowley told him dryly. “You’ve just been miracling it the whole time, you lazy bastard.”

Castiel wanted to huff and deny it, but it was not—entirely untrue.

Crowley laughed. “Alright, take your old one off, I’ll do it, you prat.”

Castiel did as he was bid, and he let the demon tie the tie around his neck. “You mustn’t follow me,” he said, “Not ever, Crowley, do you understand?”

“Castiel, no offence, but your world is terrifying.” He tightened the tie with an expert hand. Castiel felt the protection spell take effect; it shivered down to the tip of his wings, powerful and strange, like he’d dipped his feathers in cake batter.

“I quite agree. Let me see?” Castiel turned around as Aziraphale bid him, and Aziraphale smiled. “Very handsome,” he said.

“It’s exactly the same as the other one,” Castiel told him, wry.

“Higher quality,” Aziraphale sniffed. “And a terribly strong spell.” He smiled. “Now in you pop, Castiel. We have some time, but not much.” He gestured at the spell circle painstakingly drawn on the wooden floor with white paint.

Castiel strode into the circle. “Thank you,” he told them. “For everything. I won’t forget.”

“We won’t either, dear,” Aziraphale told him, and his eyes were terribly sad and terribly fond. “Don’t you worry about that.”

“Nice knowing you,” Crowley said, glumly. “Good luck with your war and all. Don’t die.”

Castiel smiled at him, small but heartfelt. “Good luck with everything,” he said, and he meant it.

There was a long, silent moment.

“_Return,_” Aziraphale said in Enochian, sadly, and everything blazed _white_.

_____________

[1] This was Crowley’s fault. He had demanded a fancy shower, if he was going to live more-than-part-time with Aziraphale, and Aziraphale had capitulated. This had led to some hilarious shenanigans wherein the two of them got quite wet and cold, before they figured out how to operate the bloody thing. The tub, however, was large enough for the two of them, and even Aziraphale had to admit that that was rather lovely.

[2] “I’ve been with you such a long time,” Crowley had been crooning while Castiel was in the shower. “You’re my sunshine, and I want you to know that my feelings are true; I really love you—” And that was fine for when they were alone but now that Castiel was here he really needed something else to hum; that was just embarrassing. 

[3] Preening, for celestials, was not awkward for a third party to observe. It was intimate, but not in any way that was uncomfortable, generally speaking; it was like holding hands or brushing hair, an everyday aspect of life. It could be as loaded with meaning as you wanted it to be, or not. Castiel hadn’t been around any sort of celestial affection at all for many years. It felt strange. He refrained from fidgeting, though he wanted to.

[4] Though preening was an everyday sort of thing, it did require some trust. In days gone by, it hadn’t been an issue. Little girls braid each other’s hair at slumber parties without thinking. In a room full of armed people you barely trust, you’re not going to ask anyone to braid your hair. This was how Castiel had been living for the last few decades, even before the apocalypse. 

[5] In this household preening happened at least once a week, generally on Fridays. Crowley liked to sing, and his dowel felt like a serpent basking in the sun, somehow. It had taken many weeks for Castiel to let him so much as stay in the same room, but he’d casually fixed a crooked feather that Aziraphale hadn’t seen, once, and after that it had been easy to let him at his back. Strange, but easy. Crowley, of course, never hurt him.

[6] He was still flinching at the first touch when Aziraphale did it, and he was embarrassed enough about that, because he _loved_ it when Aziraphale preened him. It was just—so many years wandering the world alone with Hell breathing down his neck, and that time Hastur had offered, when Hell was young and they’d all just Fallen, and he’d ripped out nearly all of Crowley’s flight feathers. Those things attached at the bone; it had _hurt_. They hadn’t grown back for years. He loved and loved and loved Aziraphale, but he was still skittish about his wings. No offence meant to Castiel, but it hadn’t even been a year.


	5. After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd would like to note that the "Egyptian" mentioned here is actually Middle Egyptian (I think) and I would have LOVED Aziraphale to call it by its actual name rather than it's translated name, but I COULD NOT FIND it written out in English letters. So if anyone has any idea of what the language (besides Greek) they spoke in Thonis was actually called, I will jump for joy, and put it in the story.

Life resumed, and it resumed a frenetic pace. It was indeed as though nothing had happened: Castiel returned to his war. He finished his war, but poorly, and all of Purgatory clouded his being. Then there was Leviathan, howling within him. Souls and a war won, with death and death and death and death. It was years later, upon the return from Purgatory, before Castiel heard from Aziraphale and Crowley again. He had not forgotten them, of course, but it felt like a dream, like he had fallen asleep like a human in an instant and conjured up this lovely, safe place. He could almost believe he had, except he was an angel, and therefore did not possess that sort of creativity. It had to have been real, and he remembered it well and fondly, even if it was barely a blip in his long, increasingly wretched existence. Thankfully neither had come to find him.

He had returned from Purgatory off-center and confused. There was a strange, nagging emptiness in his head. Things missing, things lost. He was terribly tired, and his head pounded with the ghost of pain.

He didn’t sleep. But he was sitting in a filthy, uncomfortable wingback chair in a motel room when Sam and Dean, both in bed. Dean was snoring softly, and the sound was terribly endearing. He wished Dean did not feel such pain from Purgatory, but then, some things were futile. His own guilt could fill oceans. He was so confused.

He thought about these things, in circles and circles, watching his humans sleep. The motel was ratty, and with unfortunate wallpaper. This was as much a home as he knew though; these rooms all looked the same, minus the terrible wallpaper, and Sam and Dean were here. He should have felt comforted, by their familiar presence and their resting breaths, but it felt like he was missing something, like he had forgotten something. It was so important, the thing he had forgotten[1]. He sank back into the chair, and reached for the memory. He came up with nothing. It was unsettling. 

Abruptly, the temperature of the room dropped by ten degrees. Sam curled into a tighter ball in his bed with a whimper—nightmares, likely.

Castiel looked to Dean, who had also curled up small. He didn’t like that sight at all, and nearly rose, when a soft voice stopped him.

“Angelum Castieliem quaero,” said the voice—only it was more than one voice, a hundred, thousand whispery voices all together. Castiel turned his head, surprised.

It looked kind of like a bat, or a flying squirrel. Invisible to humans, the wind elemental crouched on the little table in the room, over something that looked like parchment. It bared its teeth at Castiel. “Angelus Castiel esne ?”

“Yes,” said Castiel, startled into speach, “I am the angel Castiel.” The creature sneered.

“Linguam viventam non loquor,” is said sharply. “Boreas sum, Ventus Aquilonis, et pro angelo Aziraphalio venio.”

Castiel let out a sharp breath. Now that was a name he had missed, from a world far away, where kindness was commonplace, and even demons could love.

“Aziraphale?” he breathed.

“Aziraphalius. Custos Euroae Portae. Mihi ferre nuntium tibi rogavit . Accipisne nuntium?”

“I accept the message,” Castiel said, baffled, and the North Wind sneered at his English and dissipated like fog. The room warmed. He heard Sam sigh. 

Boreas was gone, but it had left behind the letter. Hesitantly, scarcely daring to believe it, Castiel pulled it closer and opened it. 

_My dear Castiel,_

_I hope this letter finds you well, and I dearly hope that you have won your war. Crowley and I have spent the last few years trying to find a way to contact you without endangering ourselves, the integrity of the universe, or you, and I believe this may finally be the answer. Boreas is the North Wind, and it is unbound by the laws of physics. It prefers parchment to paper, I’m afraid, and it only speaks in dead languages – I’ve been using Latin, because otherwise Crowley insists on Egyptian, specifically the port dialect in Thonis. If we begin speaking Egyptian again, I shall devolve into hieroglyphs, and we can’t have that! _

_But tell me of your adventures, dear boy, I am simply dying to know: are you well? What has happened in that nightmare world of yours? I do so hope you beat that Raphael soundly, that you have saved them all. Please tell me everything._

_Things are well here; I have acquired three new first editions for the bookshop in the last two days, and I am simply thrilled. The seasons are turning in London, and Crowley has for some reason decided to transform into a serpent and has taken to napping on top of my heater. He sends his best, of course, and he hopes you’ve eaten something nice at some point. Upon reading this letter, I must insist that you at least comb your hair, if you can’t groom your wings. I do hope you have befriended someone capable of seeing to you – to think in the last few years you have not properly preened simply breaks my heart. Find yourself an empty warehouse, dear boy, or a wide empty plain, and do it yourself! You must take better care of yourself. _

_But I’ll stop nattering on. Please write back quickly! It will be lovely to hear from you, at last! I have included some parchment for you to write upon, in case it is difficult find, or dangerous for you to conjure it. _

_All the best, _

_Aziraphale _

Written in different handwriting, Crowley had added, _PS: I demand songs or some such from that Dean of yours; my car still only plays Queen and it’s driving me mad. – Crowley_

Castiel stared at the letter. He read it again, disbelieving. He huffed an incredulous, marveling laugh. Aziraphale and Crowley. They had found him, without endangering themselves. He felt utterly terrible, and he had somehow managed to hurt Dean again, but the delight rose in him like a bubble in water. His friends had not forgotten him.

He had missed them, and their gentle world.

He found the extra parchment and groped for a pen. Boreas, he thought—Boreas, Boreas, no; Boreas simply wouldn’t do. That world wasn’t made for the North Wind. The West Wind, kind and fair, suited it much better. If Boreas answered their call, surely, he could summon Zephyr. 

He set pen to paper, and he wrote, and he wrote, and he wrote. There was a great deal of catching up to do.

\---------

[1] It started with an N and ended with an -aomi, and it was doing all _kinds_ of fun things to his memory. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [(War) What is it Good For](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26325406) by [Hope4Tomorrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope4Tomorrow/pseuds/Hope4Tomorrow)


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